See Me wakes, too cold to tremble, head down on a pile of bones. By the dim light of the cave mouth, he stands like a drunken mannikin and finds one splintered femur tight in his fist.
The monster is on him before he reaches the light. See Me cracks ribs on an icy wall and sees his own sword, a toy in the gray beast-man’s hand.
See Me lunges and stabs: clumsy, but good enough. Hot blood sprays his eyes. A high-pitched scream, and sudden pain, and a curious feeling of lightness at the end of his arm.
Big Time Leiber riffles a worn deck one-handed, a habit he’s cultivated to appear nervous when he’s not. Now he’s actually very nervous. But stopping would be an even more obvious tell.
“People in Simak City,” he says, looking out her high dark window, “all came here to be sharks, right? The city’s the house, and they think they can beat it. Maybe they can for a while. But the house can eat losses, and they can’t.”
“You have different plans?”
“You wanna win, you burn the house down.”
Darkness LeGuin pulls at the holder of two long white cigarettes.
The whole thing is very bookflap-bio: downtown sub-efficiency with a sink, shared bathroom, thin towels, the view consisting exclusively of another wall. There’s even a jazz band filtering up through the floorboards at night.
Except Jake is no chain-smoking playwright, no starving bassoonist with dreams of bassooning glory. He’s just a wanderlusty working stiff.
He tries to imagine himself as Van Gogh, as Bukowski, as… somebody who played bassoon. It won’t take. They didn’t have clean floors or Xboxes or the ability to leave whenever they wanted; his suffering is insufficient. At least the bathroom smells like pee.
Lights are still on in the opening act’s bus: Helvek is practicing scales quietly while Lens of Stars and Gurter shuffle for whist. The Electric Hipster is doing a little coke but not bothering anybody. The gig’s just ended, and there is a tension of hope that the main act might still decide to share.
Two hours later the hope leaves only its spiteful residue. The Electric Hipster peeks through the window at Lenny Spitzman’s Bus O’ Laffs, visibly wobbling across the parking lot, groupies spilling out the door.
“Fuckin’ comedians,” he mutters.
Gurter nods glumy, and strums with horny fingers.
There’s a moment when the girl in the band whom you thought was just a singer swings back around with a bass on her hip. Aury’s decided that the only name for it is, simply, glee.
It’s a good feeling: she wants to share it. Maybe she could start a club? They’d only meet in the autumn, when the smell in the air makes you want to pick up a stick and go a-questing. They’d watch the part of High Fidelity where Tim Robbins eats a telephone over and over. They’d hit each other with telephones. They’d cackle, and bleed.
She’s had less time to spend with Iala, since the Christmas holidays; so it comes as a surprise to Proserpina to find that her friend has an enemy.
“She did start it,” Iala points out.
“She couldn’t have known you were new money,” Proserpina says.
Iala’s eyes crackle. “Oh, are you going to start now too, Macnair?”
“I’m teasing, Iala.”
“Well, Ernestine Batten wasn’t,” Iala declares. “She’s a prig and a snoot and I won’t spend the next three years looking up her aristocrat’s nose!”
Proserpina says nothing more: it isn’t her affair. Until Radiane brings the girl to boxing practice.
North Carolina’s a good place to leave if you’re seeking melancholy. In London they said it was full of crazy people, and of course they’re right: shouldn’t we crazies stick together?
On my first trip to North Carolina we stopped to see you, Luke. Your voice had changed (mine wouldn’t for years) and our height difference had never been greater. You were playing violin and soccer; your dad hadn’t vanished yet. You were golden. You probably still are.
How do you stay golden? How do you leave the ones you love? How do you find someone whose last name is Smith?
The National Museum of Lara’s Boyfriends has an entire wing devoted to Todd, whom she dated for like one term. Surely you understand what that is.
It’s total bullshit.
The lone half-case it devotes to her relationship with Barry is unfair: some leading laralogists have noted that he actually gave her a mix tape on the Spanish Club trip six months beforehand, and that she didn’t see anyone seriously in the intervening period. Arguably, they were together that whole time.
And what’s with these “apocryphal” exhibits about her dating a girl in college? They can’t provide one photo?
Come on.